I was raised agnostic and tend to remain ambiguous on theological matters.

-but my house has a porch on the second story that affords me a terrific view of my neighborhood and the Colorado Front Range and I was partaking of some peace before the 4th Of July Finger-Loss Festivities begin, and I have had a

I just watched my neighbor try to unload an actual wooden pallet that had to have been forklifted into the back of his insecurity pickup worth of fireworks.

Except that he does not have a forklift in his garage.

He does have so much sports memorabilia and cardboard boxes of unsold MLM Merchandise and patriotically themed camping gear and posters of women in bikinis and flags of suspect political organizations in his garage that there is only BARELY enough space for the fireworks and certainly none for his truck.

So he had to unload the individual boxes of recreational explosives from the back of his truck and stack them in the minimal space he had cleared by hand. This is a tedious and time-consuming process as this neighbor has purchased a wide variety of recreational and locally illegal explosives instead of many of just a few types, so the individual boxes are rather small.

He begins, and this is crucial to what happens next, by cutting apart the industrial-grade saran wrap his explosives dealer had so carefully wrapped his merchandise in, and discarded it unsecured on his lawn.

Where Outdoor Conditions sometimes happen.

surely this is a good idea that doesn’t have the capacity to end real fuckin badly

Bridges aren’t supposed to have weight restrictions on them. That is, they don’t come with weight restrictions on them when they’re new. So a bridge with a weight restriction on it is a sign that something has gone wrong and the bridge does not meet current standards.

The maximum weight that a vehicle is allowed to carry on the Interstate System per federal law is 80,000 pounds gross vehicle weight (with a max of 20,000 pounds per axle). That’s 40 tons. That limit applies to every inch of pavement, not just the bridges. Since this is a known cap, a new Interstate bridge will be designed to accommodate an 80,000 lb GVW load on it. You could say the bridge’s weight limit is 80,000 lb/40 tons but that doesn’t really have much meaning, because a load higher than that would be illegal to transport on public roads anyway, and the road leading up to the bridge has the same weight restriction. (In practice, the bridge doubtlessly will be designed to have a little bit of let to it just in case some idiot tries to squeak by a few hundred extra pounds.)

Now, note that that law applies to the Interstate System only, because the federal government only has a governing interest in the Interstate System (and other roads that together make up something called the National Highway System) because they partially fund it. Most long-distance roads are owned and funded by the states. The states could theoretically set lower standard weight limits and/or design bridges with lower weight limits…but in practice they don’t.

One, because all of that 80,000 lb GVW traffic on the Interstate system has to go somewhere when it exits the system.

Two, because a group called the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO, who are best known for picking the road numbers) maintains a catalog of standard components for making bridges that meet Interstate System requirements. Engineers are expensive on a per-hour basis, so if you can direct your engineer to use standard components and make a standard bridge, that’s a lot cheaper than having them design a bridge from scratch to go over the creek in Nowheresville. As a result, most new bridges meet Interstate standards and have an 80,000 lb GVW rating even if they aren’t on the Interstate system. (This is also why all new bridges kind of look the same, but we’re not worried about how boring the bridges are for the sake of this post.)

So a bridge only has an explicit weight limit if it has been damaged in some way (through failure to properly maintain it usually) or because it predates the application of Interstate System standards and the standard AASHTO bridges.

Older bridges often have other problems in addition to the weight limits: many older designs are what we call “fracture critical”, which means that if one component of the bridge fails the whole thing collapses. Modern bridge designs have redundancy designed into them so that if one beam fails the other beams will carry the load until the damaged beam can be replaced. Older bridges also often don’t meet other standards, like height (16 ft clearance) and width (12 ft per lane plus 14 ft for shoulders) requirements.

Biden isn’t advocating eliminating weight limits and letting it be a laissez-faire free-for-all where trucks can just go wherever they want. He’s advocating for replacing bridges that carry weight limits with new ones that don’t have them.

wow i got absolutely schooled thank you for all this this is really informative. i have learned so much

This is a great explanation of what the fuck Biden was talking about in his tweet. because I will freely admit that I also went “…….wtf?????” when I read it. So thank you.

Today I learned about civil engineering.

gooby woobies

i’ve set up a little tray filled with water on a towel for Cat Enrichment. in the water are two plastic bottle caps filled with floating treats. wasabi WILL not touch wet and she WILL do anything for treats and she IS conflicted. she’s circled it for 20 minutes and almost touched the water twice but no further attempts have been made

this is a developing story

update: i slipped on the tray and hit my head

having cats is just a never-ending Wile E Coyote/Roadrunner situation and you never know which one you are until it’s too late

it obviously makes sense, but one of my friend’s kids is going into swim class, and all the parents got an email today going, “when little ones are scared, they cling on to instructors. PLEASE trim their nails.” 

i don’t know why that’s so funny to me, but just. the idea of this poor, scratched swim instructor having to make sure to email before each class as a reminder to please declaw the children SENT me. 

ID: A digital comic. First image is of Magnus, Taako, Lup, Lucretia, and Merle resting on a mall bench with a bunch of shopping bags. Magnus and Lucretia sitting opposite their companions. They all look in various degrees of bored and tiredness. Merle, a dwarf man, is asleep. Magnus, a human man, rests his head on his arms as his hands. Taako, an elven man in a wizard hat and a hoodie, mutters, "Who's great idea was it to give the van keys to Barold and Capt'n Port? It's gonna take like, two hours to track them down." Lup, holding a cellphone in one hand, raises her other hand to her face and shouts, "BLUE!" into the air. The second image shows a zoomed-out view of the group in the center of the busy mall. The following panel shows the same view, now with a word bubble from somewhere on the second floor, a responding "JEANS!" The third image zooms back in on the crew, all looking puzzled about the shouting, save Merle, who is still asleep. End ID.

it's their version of marco polo

@blupjeansweek beginnith! it's not midnight for me so this counts for day 1 prompt: bluejeans

How DARE Tolkien omit in the final draft the information that the traditional hobbit marriage custom is to have unspoken vibes for years and then disappear without explanation for an indeterminate length of time!?

#where's the fic where bilbo returns with thorin in tow and no one bats an eye#like#'he married a dwarf did he? well he always was an odd fellow'#'good day to you master dwarf how's your husband?'#and thorin is just ?????#'how do they know i'm courting him? did he show them the mithril shirt?'#just give me all the hilarious culture clashes ok

@finegoddamnit​ how dare you hide this in the tags

so that whole time merry, pippin, sam, and frodo are gone the whole shire is losing their minds arguing over who married who.

Don't worry, You can trust me with the city budget, just let me in there. Come on, just let me have the budget. I will totally not gut the police budget to build a centralized mass transit network and new libraries. I will definitely not do that, just let me in there please. Come on let me have access to the city budget for 5 minutes. That's all I ask.

And in these next 50 years you will eat so many delicious meals, laugh so many times with so many people you love, shout and scream and sing and cry and smile so hard your face hurts. And you will see such beautiful sunsets and feel fresh cold air on your face and feel warm and safe wrapped up in your favourite winter coat.

I wrap this blessing around you like a shroud, so that no ill can find you, and every warmth is held close

The thing about knitting is it’s much harder to fear the existential futility of all your actions while you’re doing it.

Like ok, sure, sometimes it’s hard to believe you’ve made any positive impact on the world. But it’s pretty easy to believe you’ve made a sock. Look at it. There it is. Put it on, now your foot’s warm.

Checkmate, nihilism.

This is a powerful positive message..

I’m literally reading a book right now (Burnout by Emily and Amelia Nagoski) that says this is scientifically sound.

There have been studies done on rats and dogs where they develop learned helplessness in the animals by giving them impossible tasks. Eventually the animals stop trying, even when the task stops being impossible. (I.e. put a rat in a maze with cheese it can’t get to until it develops learned helplessness, then put the cheese somewhere it can get to it and it won’t even try.) But once they show the animals they CAN do something - i.e. physically moving the rat to the cheese - the learned helplessness goes away.

No one can move you to your cheese for you, but the book says DOING something - which they define as “anything that isn’t nothing” can help. Make a food. Work in the garden. Clean a thing. Do a favor for a friend. Call your elected officials.

Knit a sock.

If you feel overwhelmed by existential despair, do something. It doesn’t have to be big. It just has to be anything that isn’t nothing.

This is really good advice for ADHD people because when executive dysfunction gets bad it’s easy to fall into this pattern of thinking. Do just one thing. It doesn’t have to be your homework, or a chore. It can be something small, it can be something you enjoy. But do just one thing to remind yourself that you can.

This is what “humans want to be productive” really means

We want to make things. We want to do something and at the end of the process see that something has changed. We want physical proof that we did something. We want to be able to point at something and say “I made this”. We want to be creators

Free serotonin from Honey thr Italian greyhound

This is what I’m looking for fyi

I follow them on IG they're a real married couple

Support a translator of color!

This is an ongoing situation as of 2023.06.24.

My friend Yilin (she/they) does a lot (A LOT) of work translating literature from Chinese to English, among other things. And they allowed me to signal boost this on tumblr since she doesn't have one yet.

The beginning of the thread is here: https://twitter.com/yilinwriter/status/1670305203206385665 and all the tweet images below are not described because they are previews of direct links to the tweets.

Key points: The British Museum stole their translation work and used it, uncredited, in a major exhibit where they "appeared in photos on a giant display, on signage, in a physical guide, in a digital guide, in an audio guide, and in an app that is available for international download. How did NO ONE catch there was no credit?"

The response from the British Museum has been enormously disappointing so far:

"we will not be reinstating the translations in the exhibition that have been removed following your complaint, and therefore you will not be acknowledged in the exhibition as your work will not be featured" - except the uncredited translations are still in the 30,000 copies of the exhibition catalog.

Go check out more updates downthread as the situation develops.

Want to support Yilin?

"If you want to write to them or have written to the BM, you can help convey these demands of mine to them: - credit + public apology everywhere the work appears - proper payment (increased to account for lack of prior permission given & all the time the work was uncredited)"

Boost Yilin's book! "The Lantern & the Night Moths, an anthology of Chinese poetry that I selected & translated, featuring poets incl. Qiu Jin, accompanied by my essays on translation, forthcoming w/ @/invisibooks in Spring 2024"

Yilin's page: https://yilinwang.com/book-announcement-the-lantern-and-the-night-moths/

and the pre-order link: https://invisiblepublishing.com/product/the-lantern-and-the-night-moths/

I'll try to update as more things happen, or you can go camp out on the thread.

Edit: please reblog the most current update here from 2023.07.01:

baristas deserve 100 dollars per hour

— Melissa Holbrook Pierson, The Secret History of Kindness (2015)

Stargate SG-1 | 5.16 “Last Stand”